VoC Feedback: 42 Percent of Shoppers Leave Disappointed

Online Voice of Customer (VoC) analytics provider iPerceptions has released an e-commerce report that found that only 58 percent of retail website visitors were able to complete the purpose of their visits in the fourth quarter of 2011.

The study also found that more visitors indicated they were onsite with the intent to purchase during their current visit compared to the previous year, by a margin of 22 percent of all visitors in 2011 to 16 percent in 2010. With the increase in visitors ready to purchase, online retailers should analyze and address the specific needs of this important segment and identify where they may be falling short.

“While a drop-off in task completion is expected as visitors near the bottom of the purchase funnel, the fact that almost half of buyers were unable to complete their purpose of visit is somewhat alarming,” says Claude Guay, president and CEO of iPerceptions. “For a business that already earns $10 million in online sales, a 58-percent task completion among buyers means that an additional potential $7.3 million in qualified business is walking away from the table.”

For visitors who came to make a purchase and did not complete their task in Q4 2011, 34 percent claimed they couldn’t find the product they were looking for while 32 percent said the product they found was not immediately available. Other significant barriers were unclear pricing and comparisons (18 percent) and a lack of product information (7 percent).

-The share of visitors who came for support decreased versus one year ago, from 11 percent to 7 percent.

-“To shop” remained the most popular purpose of visit.

- The share of visitors who arrived via a search engine rose significantly, from 24 percent to 34 percent.

The report is based on immediate post-experience feedback from 129,563 visitors to 97 e-commerce websites around the world. The data represents aggregated information obtained from iPerceptions’ webValidator and 4Q Suite surveys.